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We close
our September look at ninth symphonies with Schubert’s “Great C Major”
Symphony.

The
Schubert symphony catalog suggests there are about a dozen or so works that
were either published as symphonies, or were composed and never made it past
sketch form. Through the years, the numbering on Schubert's symphonies has
repeatedly shifted because of discrepancies between Schubert's notations on his
scores and the evidence from research into printing practices and paper
production during his lifetime; so it is not uncommon to encounter references
to the Great C Major as the seventh rather than the ninth.

According
to franzpeterschubert.com,
the Great C Major Symphony (some will argue his greatest composition) was never
heard by the composer, because the Viennese musicians considered it unplayable.
After Schubert's death, his older brother Ferdinand showed the manuscript of
the symphony to Schumann, who became a champion for the unknown work.
Again, orchestras in Vienna and Paris claimed the work was too long and
unwieldy even to tackle in rehearsal. Schumann therefore took it to his friend Mendelssohn,
who was the conductor of the famed Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and
Mendelssohn agreed to perform the work with his own orchestra. When, however,
he attempted to perform it in London in 1844, despite extensive cuts the
musicians refused.

Schubert
profoundly revered Beethoven, and perhaps his greatest tribute to Beethoven was
his resolve to write a grand symphony with the breadth and profundity of his
predecessor's; and his Symphony No. 9 was the result. Today its length and the
physical as well as musical hurdles it poses for musicians are no longer novel;
but it remains immensely challenging in performance. Schubert was particularly
gifted at writing beautiful lines for the French horn, and it is the French
horn's majestic motive from the slow introduction that becomes the recurring
theme of the first movement. Well after Schubert's death, the theme's grandeur
and sense of space, together with the sheer length of the Symphony, helped to
earn it the nickname the "Great C Major"

In fact,
the nickname was first applied by a music publisher to distinguish the work
from Schubert's shorter and less ambitious 6th Symphony, the "Little
C Major." But the name aptly describes both Schubert's evident intent in
writing the work, and the stature of the final composition.

Today’s
performance is taken from a Schubert cycle featuring Riccardo Muti conducting
the Vienna Philharmonic - the descendent of the orchestra that refused to
perform the work in public in Schubert’s lifetime. This Schubert cycle includes
excerpts from the incidental music to the play Rosamunde, which I have added as
filler to today’s montage.

The
premiere performance of Rosamunde took place on December 20, 1823 at the
Theater an der Wien. After only one more performance, it disappeared forever
from the repertoire of the theatre. The press was quite critical of the text of
Rosamunde, subjecting it to such scathing comments as this: 'an inutterably
insipid work'. As regards the composer, at least, we read: 'Herr Schubert's
composition shows originality, but unfortunately bizarrerie as well. The young
man is in the process of developing; we hope that it goes well ..'. The
overture was a rehash of his music for the melodrama Die Zauberharfe, which
explains why we see that name associated with the work on record jackets…

It is now
time for us to dress Anton Bruckner “to the nines” this week, and
consider his ninth - and unfinished – symphony.

There is no
debating that Bruckner had intended this to be his ninth “published” symphony.
There are two other symphonies attributed to Bruckner, which were published
after his death: a student symphony (numbered “00”) and another symphony in D
Minor, which is often called “Die Nullte” or “the zeroth” which precedes the
first chronologically and for which Bruckner wanted “a mulligan” - long after
its composition he had declared that it "gilt nicht" ("doesn't
count").

So, though
there are 11 symphonies in total, the “curse” applies here, since this was
meant to be his ninth and the last symphony upon which he worked, leaving the
last movement incomplete at the time of his death in 1896. Bruckner dedicated
this symphony "to the beloved God" (in German, "dem lieben
Gott").

As I
discussed last Spring in a post featuring Bruckner’s Fifth symphony, listeners
less familiar with Bruckner could argue that his symphonies “all sound the
same”. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but does stem from the way Bruckner
likes to develop his symphonies. Scholars call Bruckner’s approach to the
sonata form "Statement, Counterstatement and Coda." (as opposed to
the standard exposition, development and recapitulation/coda).

The opening
movement of the symphony is a clinic on this approach - an unusually large
number of motifs are given in the first subject group, and these are
substantially and richly developed on restatement and in the coda. Bruckner
also cites material from his earlier works, at one point Bruckner quotes a
passage from the first movement of his Seventh Symphony.

As I said
at the on-set, Bruckner left the fourth movement unfinished (we will get to
that later), so that the overall three-movement form of the work really is an
“oreo cookie” of expansive slow movements with a noble and brisk scherzo in the
creamy middle.

According
to Wikipedia,
Bruckner had conceived an entire fourth movement; whether the manuscripts he
left would have made up the final form of the Finale is debatable. Several
sheets of the emerging autograph score survived, consecutively numbered by
Bruckner himself, as well as numerous discarded sketches. The surviving
manuscripts were all systematically ordered and published in a notable
facsimile reprint, edited by J. A. Phillips.

Large
portions of the movement were almost completely orchestrated, and even some
eminent sketches have been found for the coda, but only hearsay suggesting the
coda would have integrated themes from all four movements.

Scholars
are split as to the virtue of these unfinished sketches, some claiming that the
Finale doesn't flow with the rest of the symphony. There is, however, an
intriguing resolution to this dilemma, and it is provided by the composer
himself.

Bruckner
knew he might not live to complete this symphony and suggested his Te Deum
be played at the end of the concert. The presence in the sketches of the
figuration heard in quarter-notes at the outset of the Te Deum led to a
supposition that Bruckner was composing a link or transition between the two
works. In fact, the sketch for such a transition can be found on the autograph
score. Some people think that at best this would have been a makeshift
solution, pointing to a tonal mismatch or clash between the two keys (D Minor
for the Symphony, C Major for the Te Deum). However, I like to point to the
“dedication” of the Symphony as a good clue that indeed this resolution has
merit.

In order
for you to make up your own mind, what I did is simply append a performance of
the Te Deum to the end of the Symphony. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a pairing
in my collection featuring the same conductor. For such a pairing, might I
suggest visiting the Music Library of MQCD Musique Classique, which hosts the
1950’s Bruckner cycle by Volkmar Andreae (Hyperlinkhere).

As Bruckner
died before completing the symphony, there aren’t any revisions of the work,
though there are at least four versions of the score. The performance on the
montage by Karajan (from his 1978 Bruckner cycle) uses the Nowak edition.

Friday, September 12, 2014

This week’s
main work – a second of four “ninths” – is Dvořák‘s symphony no. 9, which too
has a particular story attached to it.

In a Once
Upon the Internet post from the Spring, I discussed how Dvořák came to
America to lead the National Conservatory in New York. As director and teacher,
Dvorak instructed students to find inspiration in folk or national music – as
he had done with his own works.

Among the
works from that period, there are three specific works that Dvořák composed in
America: a string quartet, a suite for two pianos (both subtitled “American”)
and his ninth symphony subtitled “From The New World” (and not, as it is
sometimes referred to “the New World Symphony”). I think this is significant.

Dvorak
scholars suggest that some of the themes found in the Ninth Symphony are based
on native or African American music, as was for example Delius’ American
Rhapsody. In fact, the haunting theme of the symphony’s famous “largo” movement
was later adapted into the spiritual-like song "Goin' Home" by
Dvořák's pupil William Arms Fisher, who wrote the lyrics in 1922, 30 some years
after the symphony had been premiered. What is factual, however, is that an
African-American National Conservatory student, Harry T. Burleigh, sang
traditional spirituals to Dvořák and said that he had absorbed their `spirit'
before writing his own melodies.

We can
safely infer that Dvořák’s Symphony isn’t a showcase of – or based upon –
American music, but rather is a Czeck composer’s musical impressions of his
stay in America. Thus to all it “New World” music is a stretch…

As for
Dvořák’s suggestion that American composers “appropriate” native and African
American music as their own has only partly influenced what will become the
American “National School”. The deep-rooted syncopated rhythms that will morph
into the Blues and Jazz will have a much bigger influence in a truly idiomatic
and national sound – the one of Gershwin, and Kern and Copland.

Today’s
podcast provides a “cover-to-cover” copy of a Royal Philharmonic recording on
their home label (distributer by Intersound in 1993), which also features two
other works.

The
Carnival overture is part of a "Nature, Life and Love"
triptych of overtures composed around the same time period as the Symphony.
This overture constitutes the second ("Life") part; the other two
parts of the trilogy are In Nature's Realm, Op. 91 ("Nature") and
Othello, Op. 93 ("Love"). One of Dvorak’s most lively works, it grabs
you by the neck and doesn’t let go until the very last bar.

Dvorák's
1883 Scherzo capriccioso for orchestra, is one of the most thoroughly
enjoyable musical bonbons in the repertoire. There really is a great deal of
capriciousness to this work - at the very start of the piece the solo horn
playfully begins the main tune in the "wrong" key -- B flat -- and it
is up to the rest of the orchestra to find the way over to the real home base:
D flat major. The main tune is an almost circus-like affair; a second melody
arrives in the guise of a waltz. During the middle of the Scherzo the cor
anglais manages, on the strength of simple melodic beauty, to temporarily
substitute a little calm D major for the energetic playfulness that has thus
far been the work's focus. A horn duet begins the Scherzo's coda, which then
proceeds to afford the harpist a chance to make a Nutcracker-like arpeggio
solo; a rousing climax is drawn after the solo horn once again chides the
orchestra to action.

Today is
our first new Friday Blog and Podcast since last June, and we embark in a new
thematic arc, considering ninth symphonies. Today’s instalment has its
peculiarities…

The Curse of the Ninth

A “ninth” symphony
seems to have a curse around it. Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Dvorak, Schubert and Bruckner (the latter three being featured this month) didn’t compose
(or, at least, publish) symphonies past their ninth. Mozart composed at least
41, Haydn 104, and Shostakovich 15 but there seems to be this stigma associated
with a ninth symphony that didn’t go unnoticed by Gustav Mahler.

After
writing his Eighth symphony (the mammoth Symphony of A Thousand), Mahler chose
not to call his next large symphonic work, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of
the Earth) a symphony, thus avoiding the need to call it “his ninth”.

Now, maybe
thinking the curse of the ninth had been avoided, Mahler did compose a tenth
major symphonic work, which he proceeded to number as his ninth symphony, and
started on a tenth and then – you guessed ir – Mahler died and so the Curse
struck again.

Because
Mahler was a working man with a day job (at the time, he was the music director
of the New-York Philharmonic), summers were the opportunity for Mahler to
compose at his lakeside retreat at Maiernigg in the Carinthian Mountains. His
usual gestation period for a major work was two years – one summer sketching
out the work, and the following summer completing the orchestration. The ninth
followed the same ritual, over the summers of 1908 and 1909. Had Mahler
survived, he probably would have programmed the work for performance sometime
in the 1910-11 season, which of course was plagued by his health problems.

The work
was premiered posthumously by his close collaborator Bruno Walter on June 26,
1912, at the Vienna Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Although
the symphony follows the usual four-movement form, it is unusual in that the
first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case with Mahler, one
of the middle movements is a ländler. Though the work is often described as
being in the key of D major, the tonal scheme of the symphony as a whole is
progressive; while the opening movement is in D major, the finale is in D-flat
major. As is the
case with his latter symphonies, the work not only requires a large orchestra
(including clarinets in A, B-Flat and E-Flat, two harps, and a large array of
percussion instruments), it lasts well over an hour.

The
performance I retained is by the late great German conductor Kurt Sanderling
who has the distinction of having had a storied career both East and West of
the Iron Curtain. Fleeing Nazism at the onset of the Second World War, he chose
to go to the Soviet Union, where he was co-music director of the Leningrad
Philharmonic (with Evgeny Mravinsky) and led the (East-) Berlin Symphony
Orchestra, which is featured in today’s podcast.